Nokia has revealed plans to sell its digital health business back to the co-founder of Withings, the French health tracking company Nokia bought in 2016.

Finland-based Nokia originally acquired Withings for $192 million in an effort to re-establish a presence in the consumer electronics market, rebranding Withings' iOS-compatible smart connected home products as well as a range of health and fitness wearables.

withings nokia
However, it looks as if the acquisition simply didn't pay off for the erstwhile mobile phone powerhouse. In 2017, the digital health division earned just $62.4 million in revenue, but the rest of the company posted sales of $27.9 billion. Now Nokia is handing back the business to Withings' co-founder, Éric Carreel. The sale will likely be at a significant loss, although the Nokia press release didn't mention figures:

Nokia announced a review of strategic options for the Digital Health business in February 2018. The planned sale is part of Nokia's honed focus on becoming a business-to-business and licensing company. The transaction is subject to terms agreed in the negotiations and completion of the information consultation with the Works Council of Nokia Technologies (France) SA., with the deal expected to close in late Q2 2018.

The announcement follows recent reports of layoffs from the company, as well as a leaked memo that revealed the digital health division was in a bad way with little prospect of turning things around. Then in October, Nokia announced a $164 million write-down of the division's assets. Google and Samsung were reportedly looking into taking the ailing health business off Nokia's hands, but today's announcement suggests nothing substantial came of the negotiations.

Top Rated Comments

maflynn Avatar
97 months ago
Looks like Nokia is still trying to figure out what they want to do as a business.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
brucewayne Avatar
97 months ago
We bought the Thermo, BP Cuff and Smart scale before Nokia took over and they have worked almost flawlessly for years. The only problem we had was with their watch and Nokia support was useless for that.

Glad to see Withings take it back over
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
LV426 Avatar
97 months ago
Good. Now make your products so that they don’t require an ‘account’ to function, process highly personal medical information, and send the results in plain text email, like writing your medical history on a postcard.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GadgetBen Avatar
97 months ago
Nokia are an absolute joke, we have the body scale and Nokia removed some of the key features of the scale and completely ruined the old Withings app when they took it over.

Nokia have no idea what they should be doing anymore.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
spazzcat Avatar
97 months ago
Good! Nokia has not don't a single good thing with Withings. The new app is a mess, and they broke old hardware for months at a time.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
honglong1976 Avatar
97 months ago
That's great news. Back to the Withings brand. How frustrating for those who upgraded their Withings to Nokia branded goods only for them to revert back to Withings again.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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